270 The Arch-Druid : [SEPT. 



limity, like a guardian spirit, above the city ; while the gorgeous archi- 

 tectural landscape was bounded by the Augustan Palace on the Pala- 

 tine. Of all these matchless triumphs of art, what now remains ? A 

 broken fragment, and an empty name ! The lofty arch has sunk ; the 

 fountain has dried up ; the temple has mouldered into dust ; the very 

 hill itself has bowed its castellated head. The -wonders of a newer age 

 have succeeded those of Imperial Rome ; and like those, too, having 

 stood their little hour, shall fade, drop, and pass away ! 



On reaching the place of their destination, Sergius and his companion 

 separated. The former now for the first time in his life wholly inactive, 

 with no excitement of any kind to enliven and refresh the springs of 

 existence, resigned himself, with scarce an effort to counteract its influ- 

 ence, to ennui. Of all conditions in life, none is more pitiable than that 

 of an unemployed soldier. Every other profession brings with it its own 

 peculiar indestructible advantages. The lawyer the divine the states- 

 man the author the artist can turn, in the decline of life or for- 

 tune, to those mental resources with which, in some shape or other, their 

 situations must necessarily have brought them acquainted; but the sol- 

 dier, whose years have been spent in camps among the bravest, though, 

 in nine cases out of ten, the most unenlightened of beings, whose high- 

 est ambition has been to act on matter, not mind, to overcome physical 

 obstructions by physical, not mental agency, possesses no such advan- 

 tages. Away from the stir of the camp, he is wholly at the mercy of 

 circumstances. He drifts along the surface of society like an unpiloted 

 wreck on the ocean. He is a useless, blighted slip, torn off from the 

 plantation of human kind. 



Such was now the case with Sergius. Removed from the bustle of 

 the camp, he felt himself alone in the world. He had no relish for the 

 intellectual pleasures which luxury and civilization engender ; and 

 though abundantly endowed with animal courage, was wholly destitute 

 of that loftier moral energy which builds up a towering but rational con- 

 fidence upon Self. There is nothing so destructive to an active mind as 

 leisure. The rust eats into the tempered steel with far less deadly effect 

 than idleness into the heart's core of such a disposition. Day by day, 

 the ennui of Sergius assumed a deeper shade. His disrelish for society 

 gradually darkened into misanthropy, and, what was worse than this 

 for to be misanthropical has at least the advantage of nourishing the 

 energies of hatred, and so far of keeping up a strong physical excite- 

 ment settled finally down into the abject freezing torpor of despair. 



Two tedious months had thus elapsed, during which he had seen 

 nothing of his fellow- voyager, Manlius, when one morning he received 

 a visit from that youth, announcing that the Druids had risen in a body 

 from north to south of Wales. Manlius concluded his communication 

 by advising the Daciaii to apply to the emperor for permission to 

 check the progress of the rebels. " My life on it," said he, warmly, 

 " you will succeed ; I have a friend high in favour at court, who has 

 promised me that he will second your application not only with his own 

 influence, but also with all that he can exert with Messalina." 



The soldier's eye sparkled at this proposition. He caught at his 

 friend's suggestion with ardour, who quitted him in a happier frame of 

 mind than he had been since they both entered Rome. 



A prompt reply was given to Sergius's application. The emperor 



